


This Heart of Mine

by aster_risk



Series: Sinners [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, William kind-of, but the story mulder and scully need, not the smut you asked for, this sequel is like batman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 17:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14981777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aster_risk/pseuds/aster_risk
Summary: Twelve years after his affair to remember, Mulder stumbles into a familiar face in a Reston dive bar.





	This Heart of Mine

Mulder picks a bar fight in Reston on a Friday. It’s fucking stupid, and probably not worth the black eye, but the little shit had it coming. He was minding his own business, thank you very much, scribbling ideas for an alien-laden thriller the likes of which Jose Chung had never seen, when Tom fucking Colton of all people sauntered up to the counter.

 

Maybe it’s weird that he writes mysteries in his spare time, given his occupation, but it’s not like he’ll think of anything besides work and distant planets. Maybe he’s just trying to write less outlandish murders than the ones he encounters on a weekly basis; maybe he yearns to be bored by a murder mystery (instead of astonished, stunned, horrified…). Or maybe he just wants a fucking resolution for once, and at least the book ends.

 

Morbid? Yeah, but writing is a better hobby than boredom and old age.

 

He really  _is_  getting old, if he seeks resolution. In his youth, the string of unanswered questions nagged incessantly. In his youth, he sought the truth like a bloodhound, and he still does—but God, it exhausts him like it never has before.

 

He won’t stop asking, though. It’s not like he wants to quit writing and cash in his trust fund and buy a house in the suburbs and never think about aliens again. It isn’t about that—the tiredness in his bones has nothing to do with normalcy, everything to do with loneliness.  _Trust no one_ , a mantra in his head repeats like a broken mixtape, and it’s tiring after fifteen years. God, when did he become so jaded? He just wants a clever mouth to converse with, someone willing to eat with him and click through weird TV documentaries. Someone who is neither a trigger-happy spy nor utterly dismissive of him.

 

(The cryptids and conspiracies woven into his daily life probably preclude this possibility.)

 

It is for these reasons—boredom, loneliness, resolution—that Fox Mulder gets into his first bar fight at age forty-eight. Colton flags down the bartender, calling her ‘sweetheart’ and fixing his eyes like a security camera on her cleavage. Then he turns to Mulder and holds up two meaty fingers, pinching them together in a ring. “I heard they’re this close to closing your X Files,” he drawls smugly. He orders himself a vodka martini. Fancies himself a secret agent, apparently.

 

“They’ve teetered on the verge of shutting me down since ninety-three,” Mulder responds, rolling his eyes. He’s not in the mood to put up with Colton’s shit, not tonight. He doesn’t want to catch an earful of office gossip, nor does he feel like hearing rude comments that speak volumes less about Mulder’s job security than Colton’s personal security.  

 

“Eighteen years and they still let you blabber on about little green men. If I were in charge of the FBI, your ass would’ve been fired a long time ago.” Colton sounds like he’s already a few beers deep, stumbling slightly over his words. Mulder rolls his eyes. Even sober, Colton sings like a broken music box, and his once-cutting attitude has blunted to the point of pathetic. His boss seems to think so too, given that Colton hasn’t advanced in a decade.

 

He could say the same for himself, of course, but it’s not like he tried to crawl up the basement steps and beg for a better assignment. The X Files  _belonged_ to him. His childhood lay buried in those files, and year by year, he’d buried the rest of his life in them as well. Sad, maybe, but if Mulder considers himself pitiable, Tom Colton is even sadder because he actually expected to be Director by now. He’d almost feel sorry for the guy if Colton’s drunk ass wasn’t harassing him after hours.

 

Turning back to the bartender, Colton grins cheekily. “You got great tits,” he informs her with burning oil in his eyes, and reaches out squeeze the aforementioned tits like a kitchen sponge.

 

Mulder slaps his outstretched hand onto the counter. “Don’t be an ass, Colton,” he growls as if it’ll actually make a difference.

 

Wrinkling his nose, Colton tugs his arm out from beneath Mulder and throws a punch. Christ. He should’ve been prepared for Tom Colton’s insecure fists, but he didn’t think he’d actually fight him. Especially not at a friendly dive bar.

 

He goes down like a sack of potatoes on the filthy hardwood floor. Colton is standing triumphantly over him, his petulant nose wrinkled into a snarl… and then he’s not. A pair of would-be delicate hands wearing a gold bracelet shove Colton aside and a stern, disapproving finger is shoved into his face and it’s clear he’s getting a telling-off from whoever that hand belongs to. Still prostrate and too old to hop to his feet before recovering from the blow, he cranes his neck to see the woman’s face.

 

She’s beautiful, sharp and elegant and disturbingly familiar, framed in cropped crimson hair and a jawline that could cut diamonds. A tiny cross rests between her clavicles, in the lapels of her ink black blazer. She wears lightning in her eyes. Jesus, he must be unconscious, because he swears he’s seen her before—in a dream, maybe. A wild fairy-dream, or a sex dream, or some sordid apocalyptic war-dream, where she is the captain of something golden and good.

 

Tom Colton cowers under her glare, and when she steps into his personal space he fucks off fast. The woman’s eyes soften when they meet his, and she offers him a hand. “Are you alright?” she asks, in a voice that drifts between sand and molasses.

 

“Yeah, uh-huh,” he says absent-mindedly, taking her hand and getting to his feet. “Sorry about all that.”

 

She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize. I saw what that asshole did to the bartender, and I heard the shit he was saying.”

 

Mulder chuckles sadly. “Yeah, well, I work with him. Most people are more inclined to stand with him than with me.”

 

“That’s a shame,” the woman says. Gently, she runs her fingers along his bruised jaw. He’s not sure why he lets her. “I’m a medical doctor; let me take a look at that.”

 

Wincing, Mulder obliges, angling his jaw to her.

 

“You’ll want to ice that,” she tells him softly. Then she nods, satisfied with her assessment. “Ice, ibuprofen, nothing time won’t fix. That was noble of you, but stupid.”

 

Yes, Mulder muses, he has definitely met this woman before. He recognizes the rise and fall of her vocal chords, her piercing blue eyes, the way her lips tighten when she’s upset. His eyes rest on the cross around her neck, and then it clicks. Fuck.

 

“Scully.”

 

“Have we met?” She squints at him, studies the lines around his lips that didn’t exist last time he saw her. The  _only_  time he saw her, when she waltzed into his life drunk and married and even more cynical than he was, fucked him into oblivion, and then vanished like a firefly in the Virginia night. She cocks her eyebrow (that’s how he remembers her—mussed hair, cocked eyebrow, begonia-pink cheeks, high on orgasm and existential crisis), and her lips settle into a half-hearted frown.

 

It dawns on her. He witnesses (is proud to witness) the very instant Scully recognizes him. Her mouth forms a tiny ‘o’ that could indicate either surprise or embarrassment. She huffs a shocked breath and stares at her lap, where she’s folded her doctor’s hands. “Fox Mulder.”

 

“You can forget the first part,” he jokes with a smile he’s hoping doesn’t look too forced. He feels the full weight of their awkward history settling on his shoulders.

 

“Yes, I know.”

 

“I—this is incredibly weird,” he admits with a forced laugh. “It’s strange to see you again.” He didn’t think he would ever meet Scully again; he thought she would be his doomed femme fatale. His affair to remember, relegated to a fantasy of his own youth. It is better and worse to make her real again, to let time age her as well.

 

“Twelve years,” says Scully hoarsely. Has it really been twelve years?

 

He nods (apparently it has been). “What a coincidence.”

 

“Yeah.” Absently, they sit on the bar stools again. How familiar.

 

He wants to trace her features like a map, wondering how she acquired each pale scar and laughter line. He wants to know where she’s been all this time. But most of all he  _has_  to know, and because he has no self-restraint has to  _ask_ — “Did you leave him?”

 

Scully opens her mouth indignantly, and for a second he reckons she’ll read him the riot act for asking such an invasive question, but then she calms almost as quickly, smoothing like a gusty wind. “Of course I did,” she whispers. A pause, their air between them a vacuum as he waits for her to finish whatever she’s going to say. “I left him two years after we slept together.” She speaks with a quiet confidence, a self-assurance that comes only with age and hindsight.

 

He tries not to betray his surprise. He knew the night he met her that Scully would leave her (ex-)husband, but for some reason, he assumed it would either be an instant process or suck up ten years of her life. He still hears her insistent,  _it’s not that simple_ , her desperate,  _I don’t fucking know_  and all the adrenaline packed behind it. He suspected she’d snap, or perhaps that she would wear herself down for a decade and finally end her marriage. He never thought it would be an anxious in-between.

 

“What do you do, these days?” Scully asks him hesitantly. He sees it for what it is—a ploy to change the subject from her past marriage, and listens.

 

“I still work on the X-Files,” he confesses with a shrug. “I guess the truth is still out there.”

 

Scully shoots him a look that’s something like sympathy. “I guess it is.” Aimless words, but they come from a fonder, less cynical place than the Scully of 1998.

 

“I write, too, though. Now that I’ve amassed enough memories to fill a few sci-fi thrillers.”

 

“Fiction?”

 

He smirks. “Maybe to you.”

 

“Fiction,” she confirms.

 

“Well what are you up to?”

 

“Currently teaching medical students. I’m also a consulting pathologist for the FBI.”

 

Mulder gapes. “How come I’ve never seen you?”

 

Scully shrugs. “Our fields probably don’t overlap.”

 

“Our basements don’t intersect,” Mulder snickers. “Yours is a lot more respected. Mine is… well, spooky.”

 

“Well,” she adds, drawing in a breath, “I don’t consult often. I have my professorial duties, and I prefer to come home to my son by dinner.”

 

“Your son?” Huh. He didn’t see that coming.

 

“Yeah.” Her expression melts like honey, and she flashes him the rare, sweet smile that shows her teeth. “His name is Will.”

 

“How old is he?”

 

“Almost eight.” So he wasn’t her ex-husband’s kid. Mulder’s not sure what difference that would make, but he remembers Scully telling him she didn’t want her ex to be the father of her children. She wanted to be a mother, but not with him. Not  _for_  him.

 

Scully arches her eyebrow. “No,” she says firmly, “he’s not Daniel’s son,” in a tone that makes it clear he was right not to ask that question out loud. “He’s  _my_ son.” She narrows her eyes, as if daring him to disagree.

 

Mulder says nothing. He suspects Scully would end the conversation there, but they’ve talked about this before. She left him with so many of her hopes and fears and plans, that he can’t help but be curious how it all turned out. Scully, too, seems to recognize it’s twelve years too late to clam up, and she seems happy to talk about her son. He likes hearing this smooth, sweet cadence to her voice, that before was all gravel and cynicism.

 

“A couple years after I left Daniel I was in a great place financially, and my work hours were good, and I just… well, I decided I wanted to be a mother; fuck what anybody said about marriage and family and the fact that I was single.” She shrugs. “The entire IVF process was a grueling nightmare, but I had my mother by my side, and it worked out in the end.” She smiles warmly. “William just finished second grade. His grandmother is spending the evening with him so that I can go on a blind date.”

 

Oh. A date. It shouldn’t bother him, but his neck hairs still stand up. “And how did that go?”

 

“Well,” Scully snorts, “I’m still sitting here, aren’t I?”

 

“Why Scully, and here I thought you just enjoyed my company. I’m deceived, after all this time.”

 

Scully giggles—a sound he couldn’t have imagined leaving her lips twelve years ago. “So you haven’t lost your wits.”

 

“Well, that’s assuming I ever had them,” Mulder reminds her. “I did consider aliens an acceptable topic for flirtatious conversation. And I do believe my foreplay was a nervous breakdown.”

 

“Well you seduced me anyway.” There’s something tired in her voice, as she recalls their haggard, young selves. Scully climbed out of her proverbial basement; Mulder only dug himself deeper. Now, though—he feels every stair beneath the Hoover building melt off his shoulders. He takes in her wide blue eyes, round and expectant, seeking something. He takes in Scully’s sharp suit and crow’s feet, the way she had softened and sharpened at the same time.

 

Something stirs in the pit of his stomach. Lust, sure—but with Scully it has never been lust. Lust burns like a cigarette; Scully burns him like a hearth.

 

“You know,” Mulder says before he can stop himself, “you told me not to wait for you.” Their foreheads are inches apart, their breaths quick and hot.

 

“I meant it,” murmured Scully.

 

“Well, now that our paths have crossed again, and fate or aliens have intervened, can I ask you something?”

 

A breathy whisper— “yes.”

 

“Can I take you to a non-illicit dinner?”

 

“That ends in non-illicit sex?” she questions slyly. Her eyes sparkle with promise. He wonders if this is what she saw in  _him_ , all those years ago—eyes full of hope and maybe a universal truth (a different kind of hope and a different truth, but still). For once, the hope is liberating; it is not transgressive or jaded or wracked with guilty pleasures.

 

“Hopefully so,” Mulder replies. He leans in, bumping her nose, and gently kisses her lips. Chastely, savoring the taste of her the way he didn’t let himself when he was young. She tastes like brown sugar, begonias, spearmint gum. She tucks her phone number into his pocket on a napkin and goes home to her mother and son.

 

Mulder looks at the number, scribbled in cobalt pen, bordering on doctor’s shorthand. He waits.  

**Author's Note:**

> There will, in fact, be a Part 3. Eventually.


End file.
